Many HCM City driving school applicants will have to wait until next year to receive their licenses as a new regulation has cut drivers’ training class sizes by 30%.

The course-size cut has been compounded by the soaring demand for licenses, fuelled by a booming economy and more acutely by the thousands of drivers of modified three-and four-wheeled vehicles who will have to obtain licenses by June in line with another new regulation.

Nguyen Anh Dung, a representative from Tien Bo Driving Training School in HCM City’s Tan Phu District, said since the regulation came into effect last November, driving schools have only been allowed to teach between six and seven students for each car the school owns.

Before the regulation, the ratio was 10 student drivers per car, Dung said.

He said the number of trainees at his centre had thus decreased 30% this year while the number of applicants was soaring.

Nguyen Van Quynh, director of the Central Transportation Vocational College 3, said the regulation, which was released only 15 days before it came into effect, forced training centres to reduce the number of students they enrolled as they lacked cars and teachers.

Cao Tuan from Hung Vuong Technology School’s driving training centre in District 5 said that under the new regulation, the centre’s 30 cars were used to train 210 people in a 3-4-month course instead of 300 people as before.

“In the first four months of this year, 900 people registered to study with us,” Tuan said. “Many have to wait until next year.”

The transport ministry should have given driving schools more time to prepare, Quynh said.

The problem has been made more serious by the fact that 22,000 modified three-and four-wheel vehicles in the city will be prohibited by mid-year. Many of their owners are applying for new drivers’ licenses for new vehicles.

The ban on the modified vehicles will come into effect in June.